of the genus, and is found in this country only in southern Florida. It
is not in the same family with the dogwoods, and its name is misleading.
The Carib Indians formerly used the leaves to stupify fish and render
them easier to catch; hence the botanical name. The leaves are compound,
but bear little resemblance to the foliage of most members of the pea
family to which this tree belongs. The flowers are the tree’s chief
source of beauty, and are delicately clustered, hanging in bunches a
foot long. The fruit is a pod three or four inches long, with four wings
running the full length. The wings are useless for flying. Trees are
forty or fifty feet high and two or three feet in diameter; are common
in southern Florida and on the islands. The wood is of considerable
importance in the region where it grows but figures little in general
markets. It weighs 54.43 pounds per cubic foot, and is moderately strong
and stiff. In color it is a clear yellow-brown, with thick, lighter
colored sapwood. It is very durable in contact with the ground, and in
Florida it is used for posts, and occasionally for railway ties. It has
been commonly reported as a wood for boatbuilding in Florida, but its
importance for that purpose has probably been overstated, since an
investigation of the boatbuilding industry in Florida failed to find one
foot of this wood in use, although some may be employed but not listed
in reports.
[Illustration]
YELLOW-WOOD
[Illustration: Yellow-wood]
YELLOW-WOOD
(_Cladrastis Lutea_)
This wood’s color is evidently responsible for its names yellow ash,
yellow locust, and yellow-wood in Tennessee, North Carolina, and
Kentucky, but no reason is offered for the name gopherwood by which it
is known in some parts of Tennessee. The botanical name is based on the
brittleness of the twigs. It is the only species of the genus, and it is
not known to grow anywhere, except by planting, outside of Kentucky,
Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.
It occurs in an area not much exceeding 60,000 square miles, and it is
not abundant in that area. It prefers limestone ridges and slopes, and
does best where the soil is fertile. It often overhangs the banks of
mountain streams, and is most abundant and of largest size in the
vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee, where a few trees have reached a
diameter of three or four feet and a height of fifty or sixty. A
diameter of eighteen or twenty-four inches is a good average.
The tree’s habit of dividing six or seven feet from the ground into two
or more stems is responsible for the scarcity of trunks suitable for saw
timber, even in localities where trees of large size are found. However,
an occasional trunk develops a shapely form. It goes to sawmills so
seldom that it is never mentioned in statistics of lumber cut or
wood-utilization.
Most people who are acquainted with this tree, know it as planted stock
in parks and yards where it is a favorite on account of its flowers. The
bloom may properly be described as rare from two viewpoints. The beauty
of its large clusters of white flowers differs from those of all
associated trees; and it seldom blooms. One year of plenty is generally
followed by several lean years. Those who plant the tree understand
this, and feel amply repaid for the long wait, when the flowering year
arrives. The planted tree is often known as virgilia, that being the
name under which nurseries sell it. Flowers appear about the middle of
June, in clusters a foot or more in length. It is claimed, but with what
correctness cannot at present be stated, that the odor of flowers of
different trees varies greatly, being faint with some, and strong and
luxurious with others.
The leaves are compound, but have no resemblance to those of locust and
the acacias. They are eight or twelve inches long, with five or seven
leaflets. In autumn before falling they change to a clear yellow, but
adhere to the branches until rather late in the season. The fruit, which
consists of small pods hanging in clusters, is ripe in September.
Yellow-wood is a little below white oak in strength and seven pounds per
cubic foot under it in weight; is hard, compact, and susceptible of a
beautiful polish. Rings of yearly growth are clearly marked by rows of
open ducts, and contain many evenly-distributed smaller ducts. The wood
is bright, clear yellow, changing to brown on exposure; sapwood nearly
white. Trunks of largest size are generally hollow or otherwise
defective.
The uses of yellow-wood have been few. In the days when families in
remote regions were under the necessity of manufacturing, growing, or
otherwise producing nearly every commodity that entered into daily life,
the settlers among the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee discovered
that the wood of this tree, particularly the roots, yielded a clear,
yellow dye. The process of manufacture was simple. The wood was reduced
to chips with an ordinary ax, and the chips were boiled until the yellow
coloring matter was extracted. The resulting liquor was the dye, and it
gave the yellow stripe to many a piece of home-made cloth in the cabins
of mountaineers.
The women usually attended to the dye making and the manufacture of yarn
and cloth; but the men found a way to utilize yellow-wood in producing
an article once so common in Tennessee and Kentucky that no cabin was
without it--the trusty rifle. The gunsmith, assisted by the blacksmith,
made the barrel and the other metal parts, but the hunter generally was
able to whittle out the wooden stock. Yellow-wood’s lightness, strength,
and color suited the gun stock maker’s purpose, and he slowly hewed and
whittled the article, fitted it to the barrel, adjusted it to his
shoulder, and completed a weapon which never failed the owner in time of
need.
FRIJOLITO (_Sophora secundiflora_) is found in Texas, New Mexico, and
southward in Mexico. The name is Spanish and means “little bean.” A
common name for it in English is coral bean. Sophora is said to be an
Arabic word of uncertain meaning, except that it refers to some kind of
a tree that bears pods. It is a species, therefore, which draws its
names from four languages, while the name applied to it by Comanche
Indians is translated “sleep-bush.” The bright scarlet seeds, as large
as beans, but in shape like door-knobs, grow from one to eight in a pod,
and contain a narcotic poison, “sophorin.” It is probable that Indians
discovered that the beans, if eaten, produced sleep, hence the name. The
tree is from twenty-five to thirty-five feet high, and from six to ten
inches in diameter. The leaves are compound, and consist of seven or
nine leaflets. The small, violet-blue flowers appear in early spring.
They are not conspicuous, but their presence cannot escape the notice of
a traveler in the dry, semi-barren canyons and on the bluffs where the
tree holds its ground. Their odor calls attention to their presence. The
perfume is powerful but pleasant, unless the contact is too close. The
pods are from one to seven inches long, and hang on the boughs until
late winter. It is not believed that birds or mammals distribute the
seeds, as their poison renders them unfit for food. Running water
appears to be the principal agent of distribution. The tree reaches its
largest size in the vicinity of Metagorda bay, Texas. Among the dry
western canyons it is usually a shrub. The small size of this tree
stands in the way of extensive use of the wood. It burns well and its
principal importance is as fuel. The weight is 61.34 pounds per cubic
foot; it is hard, compact, susceptible of a beautiful polish; medullary
rays are numerous and thin; color is orange, streaked with red, the
sapwood brown or yellow. The wood is worked into a few small articles.
SOPHORA (_Sophora affinis_) ranges through portions of Arkansas and
Texas. It is popularly supposed to be a locust, and is called pink
locust or beaded locust, the first name based on the color of the wood,
the last on the appearance of the pod which looks like a short string of
beads, sometimes three inches in length, but usually shorter. In early
times the pioneers manufactured ink from the pods. It was a fairly
serviceable article, but was never sold, each family making its own.
This tree’s flowers appear in early spring with the leaves. Trunks reach
a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight or ten inches; but the
habit of separating into several stems a few feet above the ground
lessens the use of the wood, even as posts, for the stems are usually
very crooked. The tree’s preferred habitat is on limestone bluffs, or
along the borders of streams, or in depressions in the prairie where
small groves often occur. The wood weighs fifty-three pounds per cubic
foot, and is very hard and strong. The annual rings are clearly marked
with bands of large, open pores; medullary rays are thin and
inconspicuous; color of the heartwood light red, the sapwood yellow. The
wood is not sawed into lumber, but is whittled into canes and tool
handles.
GREENBARK ACACIA (_Cercidium floridum_) is properly named. Its green
bark makes up for its scarcity of leaves, and answers the purpose of
foliage. The manufacture of the tree’s food goes on in the bark, because
the leaves are too small to do the work. The foliage resembles that of
locust and acacia in form, but the compound leaves are about an inch in
length, and the leaflets are one-sixteenth of an inch long. Flowers are
small, but the tree puts on three or four crops of them in a single
summer. The pods are two inches long. The tree is found in the United
States only in the south and west of Texas, where it is occasionally
called palo verde. It attains a height of twenty feet and a diameter of
ten inches when at its best. The wood is pale yellow tinged with green,
and, because of small size, is of little importance.
PALO VERDE (_Cercidium torreyanum_) sheds its leaves and its pods so
early in the season that its branches are bare most of the year. Trees
are from fifteen to thirty feet high, and some are considerably more
than a foot in diameter. Its range covers a portion of southern
California, the lower part of the Gila valley in Arizona, and extends
southward into Mexico. It is a typical tree of the desert, and its
extreme poverty of foliage enables it to live in a dry, hot climate. It
clings to the sides of desert gulches and canyons, ekes out a dreary
life in depressions among desolate dunes and hills of sand and gravel,
and spends its allotted period of years in solitude, growing either
singly or in small groups where the full foliage at the best time of
year is insufficient to offer much obstruction to the full glare of the
sun from a cloudless sky. The small flowers have little beauty or
sweetness, but what they have is wasted on the desert air. Wayfarers in
the barren country use the wood for camp fires.
INDIGO THORN (_Dalea spinosa_) receives its name from the color of
its flowers which appear in June. The tree has few leaves and they
fall in a short time. This appears to be a provision of nature to
enable the tree to endure the heat and dryness of its desert home.
Its range covers the lower Gila valley in Arizona, and extends into
the Colorado desert in southern California. It is not abundant, and
if it were, it is of a size so small that it is practically
valueless for commercial purposes. Some trees are a foot in diameter
and twenty feet high. The wood is light, soft, and of a rich
chocolate-brown color. It is known also as indigo bush and dalea.
EYSENHARDTIA (_Eysenhardtia orthocarpa_) is so little known that it
has no English name. It grows from western Texas to southern
Arizona, but reaches tree size only near the summit of Santa
Catalina mountains in Arizona where it is twenty feet or less in
height and seldom more than eight inches in diameter. It inhabits an
arid region, and bears fruit sparingly, with usually a single seed
in a pod. The wood is heavy and hard, light reddish-brown in color,
with thin yellow sap. It is not of commercial importance and
probably never will be.
[Illustration]
MESQUITE
[Illustration: MESQUITE]
MESQUITE
(_Prosopis Juliflora_)
There are known to be sixteen species at least of mesquite in the world,
in Asia, Africa, and North and South America. The one here considered
has a geographical range of at least seven thousand miles north and
south, from Kansas to Patagonia, and an east and west range of four
thousand miles, if the naturalized growth in Hawaii may be considered
the western outpost of the species.[7]
[7] Botanists have had much controversy among themselves concerning
mesquite, particularly as to what is its correct name. In giving in
these pages some of the important facts concerning this interesting
tree, or group of species and varieties, it is not necessary to
touch the points in dispute.
The generic name _prosopis_ is a Greek word meaning “burdock;” the rest
of the botanical name is Latin, meaning “July flower.” Mesquite is an
Aztec word (mezquitl), coming down through the Spanish. Other names for
the tree are algaroba, honey locust, honey pod, and ironwood.
The largest size of mesquite is found along the Rio Grande in southern
Texas where trees three feet in diameter and fifty feet high are found,
but individuals of that size are rare. The species is supposed not to
extend west of New Mexico, but varieties grow farther west.
The leaves are compound, with twenty or more leaflets. The foliage is
thin and casts a penumbrous shadow; trees generally occur wide apart,
and there is enough sunshine reaching the ground to satisfy grass and
other plants growing there. The pods are from four to nine inches long,
and each contains from ten to twenty seeds. The principal growth of this
tree in the United States is in Texas. It has been planted in Hawaii and
has run wild in some of the islands of the group. It is of slow growth,
but of remarkable vitality, holds its own, and gains ground in the face
of obstacles.
Persons well acquainted with conditions in Texas, both past and present,
say that the mesquite area is at least double now what it was when the
state came into the Union. Old stands were scattered here and there, but
hundreds of square miles which were in grass only, and little of that,
half a century ago, now support forests of mesquite. It is perhaps a
misnomer to designate some of these stands as forests, for they present
a rather ragged and sorry appearance, but they are forests in the
process of forming. The old growth, which is found principally in the
counties bordering on the lower Rio Grande, is made up of trunks of
large size, but the stands that have come on within the past fifty or
sixty years are of smaller trees. A large mesquite trunk is from one to
three feet in diameter; a small one from one foot down to an inch or
two. A person would need to hunt from center to circumference of Texas
to find many mesquite trunks that would make a straight sawlog twelve
feet long. The tree is generally one of the most crooked, deformed and
unpromising in the whole country; and its habit of dividing into forks
near the ground, like a peach tree, makes it still more difficult to
make use of. In fact, in winter when mesquite trees are bare of leaves
the appearance of a forest reminds the observer of an old, neglected,
diseased, moss-grown peach orchard in the eastern states; but in summer
the leaves conceal much of the trunk scaliness and deformity, and there
is something positively restful and attractive in the prospect of a wide
range of these trees, covering hills and prairies. The leaves are
compound like the acacias, and are delicate and graceful.
The spread of mesquite in the last fifty or seventy-five years has been
attributed to the checking of grass fires which Indians once set yearly
to keep the prairies open. The dispersion of the trees is facilitated by
the scattering of seeds by cattle which feed on the pods. It is a tree
hard to kill. Roots send up sprouts year after year during long periods.
Sometimes, but not often in Texas, when adverse circumstances become so
severe that the mesquite tree can no longer survive above the surface,
it grows beneath the ground, sending only a few sprouts up for air. “Dig
for wood” is a term applied to trees of that kind, when fuel is dragged
out with mattocks, grab hooks, and oxen.
The roots of the mesquite penetrate farther beneath the surface for
water than any other known tree in this country. Depths of fifty or
sixty feet are occasionally reached. Well diggers on the frontiers
learned to go to the mesquite for water. Large trunks never develop
unless their roots are abundantly supplied with moisture. Railroad
engineers on the “Staked Plains” of northwestern Texas turned that
knowledge to account in boring wells.
Though mesquite is seldom or never mentioned in the lumber business, it
is and has been one of the most important trees of the region. Its fuel
value is very great. It has cooked more food, warmed more buildings,
burned more bricks, than any other wood in Texas. The tannic acid in it
injures boilers and it is not much used for steam purposes. It is very
high in ash. A cord of mesquite wood when burned leaves from ninety to
one hundred pounds of ashes. This exceeds five fold the ashes left when
white oak is burned.
Mesquite is a high-grade furniture material, though it is difficult to
work because of its exceeding hardness. Ordinary wood-working tools and
machinery will not stand it. Suites of nine pieces are sold in some
southwestern cities at $200 or $300. The merchants find difficulty in
getting mesquite furniture made. Factories do not want to handle it,
though the articles sell higher than mahogany. Large, heavy tables,
deeply carved, are sold in some of the cities, but all seem to be made
to order and largely by hand. The appearance of the polished and
finished wood is a little lighter in color than mahogany. It is not
uniform in color, but shades from tone to tone in the same piece. A
little of the lighter colored sapwood is worked in with pleasing effect.
Some of the tones resemble black walnut, and some suggest the luster of
polished cherry.
Mesquite is brittle. Pieces of large size may be broken by a few blows
with an ax. It has about half the strength of white oak, and is very low
in elasticity. The wood has been used for two hundred years--possibly
for thousands of years--as beams and sills for adobe houses; but it is
not required to carry much weight. Spaniards employed it in building
their churches and forts within its range. A timber taken from the
Alamo, at San Antonio, Texas, in 1912, was said to have served more than
190 years with no sign of decay. Fence posts survive the men who set
them. Paving blocks outlast sandstone subjected to the same use.
Railroads in southern Texas employ this wood for crossties, but it is so
hard that holes must be bored for the spikes.
Mesquite baskets are made by hand of splits the size of knitting
needles, some of white sapwood, others of dark heartwood. Such baskets,
large enough to contain five quarts, sell in the curio shops at San
Antonio for $1.25 each. Some wagon makers insist that mesquite is in the
same class with Osage orange for wagon felloes in hot, dry regions; but
it does not appear that much of it is so used. The brittleness of the
wood is against it, in use as felloes, except for vehicles of the
heaviest sort where large pieces are demanded.
Among the uses of mesquite, by-products are an important consideration.
The pods are food for farm stock. Before the first railroad reached San
Antonio mesquite pods were a regular market commodity. The Mexicans know
how to make bread and brew beer from the fruit; tan leather with the
resin; dye leather, cloth, and crockery with the tree’s sap; make ropes
and baskets of the bark. Parched pods are a substitute for coffee; bees
store honey from the bloom which remains two months on the trees; riled
water is purified with a decoction of mesquite chips; vinegar is made
from the fermented juice of the legumes; tomales of mesquite bean meal,
pepper, chicken, and cornshucks; mucilage from the gum; and candy and
gum drops from the dried sap.
One of the most promising uses for this wood is in turnery. Short
lengths can be utilized to advantage. The artistic color fits it for the
manufacture of lodge gavels, curtain rings, goblets, plaques, trays,
and numerous kinds of novelties. Spindles for grills and stairways do
not suffer in comparison with black walnut, mahogany, cherry, and teak.
The wood is porous, annual rings narrow and indistinct, and the
medullary rays thin and inconspicuous.
A variety (_Prosopis juliflora glandulosa_) is found from Kansas to
eastern Texas, and also in Arizona and California. It is the common
mesquite of eastern Texas. Another variety (_Prosopis juliflora
velutina_) occurs in some of the hot valleys of southern Arizona and
southward in Mexico.
SCREWBEAN (_Prosopis odorata_) is known also as screwpod mesquite,
and tornillo. The name is due to the pod’s habit of growing in
spiral form, there being a dozen or more tight twists. The flowers
appear in early spring and new crops follow until summer. The pods
ripen early in autumn or late in summer, and many become infested
with grubs. The tree is from twenty-five to thirty feet high, and a
foot or less in diameter. Its range extends from western Texas and
Utah and Nevada through New Mexico and Arizona to southern
California. The wood is stronger and stiffer than common mesquite,
but a little lighter. Its uses are much the same, and it has the
same habits of growth, including its disposition to develop enormous
roots. The name might lead to the conclusion that the flower is rich
in perfume, but such is not the case. The tree grows slowly and
lives to old age, if it escapes fire and other accidents.
CHALKY LEUCÆNA (_Leucæna pulverulenta_), commonly called mimosa,
occurs in the United States only in southern Texas, but is somewhat
abundant in Mexico, where trees sixty feet high and nearly two feet
in diameter are sometimes manufactured into lumber. Along the Rio
Grande it is called “tepeguaja” by Mexicans. This name is said to be
equivalent to “hardwood,” which is an appropriate name. It is very
smooth and handsome when finished, and is used for tool handles,
small spindles, grills, and other small articles, particularly
products of the lathe. In color it resembles the lighter shades of
mahogany; weighs about forty-two pounds per cubic foot; foliage
extremely delicate and the tree is highly valuable for ornamental
purposes. It has been planted outside of its natural range. The pods
sometimes exceed a foot in length.
LEUCÆNA (_Leucæna glauca_) is small and probably will never be of
much importance. Trunks are seldom more than five inches in diameter
and twenty feet high. The tree grows in canyons and ravines in
western Texas. The compound leaves are six or seven inches long,
with thirty or less pairs of leaflets; fruit is a pod six or eight
inches long. The rich brown wood is streaked with red.
[Illustration]
SWEET BIRCH
[Illustration: SWEET BIRCH]
SWEET BIRCH
(_Betula Lenta_)
Ten species of birch occur in the United States, including Alaska. Six
are eastern and four western.[8] Sweet birch is known by that name in
many localities, but in others as black birch, cherry birch, river
birch, mahogany birch, and mountain mahogany. Its range extends from
Newfoundland to northwestern Ontario, south to southern Indiana,
Kentucky, and along the Appalachian mountains to Tennessee and North
Carolina. Probably the best development of the species is found in the
Adirondack region of northern New York, in the northern peninsula of
Michigan, through southern Ontario, and along the mountain ranges
southward through Pennsylvania and West Virginia.